Bank on It: Fidelity Money Market Versus Chase Manhattan Checking Accounts

One of the nice things about being an adult in the adult world is that we all get to make our own choices. We're all subjected to the consequences of our inane, stupid, idiotic, brilliant or dreary decisions, even if those consequences end up being a net nil. So it was a number of years ago that I started looking into the financial pages of the world, to try and carve out a better niche for myself than my forefathers had before me. Make no mistake; I wasn't a "poor" kid growing up. Not at all as I had many of the nice things we all strove for as children in the suburbs, like chicks with our necks craning for the worms dangling from our mother's mouth.

But if there was one behavior that I could never get my head around it was dealing with all the rhetoric and nonsense that went along with the commercial banking world. I just could not understand why so many people, my parents included, were so egregiously predisposed towards the bank. Every month it was something I always dreaded, the bank statement. In an age before computer banking but well into the time of the ATM fee, I was always so puzzled. "There's got to be another way," I thought.